Mission

Cryo electron microscopy (3DEM) is a maturing methodology in structural biology that enables the determination of 3D structures of macromolecular complexes and cells from 2 to 100 Å resolution, yielding information that bridges the gap between cell biology and crystallography/NMR. EMDataBank is the unified global portal for one-stop deposition and retrieval of 3DEM density maps, atomic models and associated metadata, and is a joint effort among investigators of the Protein Databank in Europe (PDBe) at the European Bioinformatics Institute, the Research Collaboratory for Structural Bioinformatics (RCSB) at Rutgers, and the National Center for Macromolecular Imaging (NCMI) at Baylor College of Medicine. EMDataBank also serves as a resource for news, events, software tools, data standards, and validation methods for the 3DEM community.

A major goal of the EMDataBank project in our current funding period is to work with the 3DEM community to (1) establish data-validation methods that can be used in the process of structure determination, (2) define the key indicators of a well-determined structure that should accompany every deposition, and (3) implement appropriate validation procedures for maps and map-derived models into a 3DEM validation pipeline. The EM Validation Task Force (EM VTF) has made initial recommendations to guide development of 3DEM validation criteria. Our aim is to facilitate the many processes needed to assess, establish, and disseminate validation methods and standards. Below is the approximate timeline for these activities.